Comments

Sorry if I confused anyone, the idea of Gazelles got me carried away. The suggested variant in my last comment was not modelled on Gast's Chess but a follow-on from my comments on (a) the Gazelle's Knightlike qualities and (b) my reason for not having a Nearlydouble of a variant with both Knights and Knighted pieces. By Grand I really did mean Grand, not Gast's. Perhaps that comment would have been better in a free-standing thread, or even on my main Nearlydouble page. It was only the 12x12 of my previous comment that was based on Gast's Chess, and addressing just two well-defined issues with it. If I were to do a Nearlydouble of a 12x12 variant it would be either 19 files by 15 ranks or 22 ranks x 13 files, depending on which if any factor of 12 ranks was significant

It is not very clear to what effect Gilman is offering up revision of Gast's. What's a good opening move, Charles, on this new size 13x15? 13x15. Or a plausible opening sequence to advantage (Knight + Zebra)? The idea in the Gast Knight enhancement, forty-five years old, is to keep the three different legs within a surrounding 7x7. It is rejection of the Carrera model. By coincidence Mark Hedden of Ganymede and Europan also was early avoider of conventional BN and RN. That phase of Carrera/Capa compounds one after another was outgrown even by modern designers some time the mid-aughts finally 6 or 8 years ago. (Knight + Zebra) is pretty opaque though better p-t than any compound of duals beyond the Gnu. (Knight + Zebra), call it Gazelle after Gilman, is worth cataloguing into Sovereign values and so forth. The reason Gast's (Knight + Alfil + Camel) is probably better for players is that all-orthogonal-adjacency of arrival squares might be more consistently visualizable. However, it is close call since on the other hand bi-compound ought to be favoured over tri-compound in principle. The distinction though is why Betza Half-Duck has no counterpart in (Wazir + Alfil + Tripper) at least by Betza. Ralph was pretty discriminating amidst his own proliferation up to 150 cvs, more than anyone can possibly play let alone master, in mentioning rejects of dozens of alternatives within many a one solitary CV write-up too.

Actually the more I think about it the more I like the idea of using Gazelles for a Knighted-piece Nearlydouble. I can see it now, a Nearlydouble Grand Chess with the folowing array:
where the Knight image represents the Gazelle, and the Knighted pieces the Razorbill and Basilica.

Since 2004 I had quite forgotten this variant, and I noticed it as the variant alphabetically following Ganymede Chess while navigating to that variant following a comment referring to it with no link.

How naive my 2004 judgment must appear! How did I fail to notice how far in the Archers were - the King's-side one too near the King for Castling to be as good as thought that it waa at a time? I have to agree with a later criticism of 'knighting' a Bishop with a piece that alhas a diagonal move anyway. In fact the form of Knight enhancement used here is a bit of a mess anyway, as it detracts from the FIDE (and Carrera and Bird and so on) pattern of one basic piece being unafected by square colour, one colourbound, and one colourswitching. Even the Endknight of my Nearlydouble Chess, which does retain colourswitching, would have a corresponding problem in a knighted Rook.

Neither of these problems are unsurmountable. As regards the first, the Archers could be swapped with the next piece out to put them exactly the same distance from the King that FIDE Chess puts Rooks. It will actually have the bonus of an array with all Pawns unprotected (unless I've missed something, the Guards' Pawns are unprotected in the current array). As regards the second, I would suggest enhancing the Knight by adding the Zebra to give a Gazelle. At one time I suggested names for Rook+Gazelle and Bishop+Gazelle - Razorbill and Basilica - and while I dropped these as obscure one-offs I could reintroduce them to Man and Beast if the pieces appear in a variant.